Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Spanking Fetish, and Other Famous People’s Unexpected Behavior

1. Santa’s Unexpected Temper

Things were chaotic in early Christianity, with little consensus about the new faith’s doctrine. In 325 AD, Emperor Constantine the Great convened bishops in Nicaea, in what is now Turkey, to sort things out in what came to be known as the First Council of Nicaea. It settled some core issues, such as the divine nature of Jesus and his relationship to God, the first part of the Nicene Creed, and when to celebrate Easter. The debates en route to consensus were heated, though. They were not like Ivy League discussion panels, where violence is the last thing expected from nerdy professors in bowties and thick glasses. Participants at the Council of Nicaea could and did settle debates with their fists. Forget passive aggressive cutting remarks: early church fathers could pull out knives in the middle of discussions to literally cut each other.

Saint Nicholas of Myra was among the bishops at Nicaea, and settled a discussion there with his fists. His victim was a priest named Arius, whose teachings had roiled Christianity and caused the convocation of the council in the first place. The controversy’s details seem esoteric and make little sense to modern ears, but they mattered a whole lot to people back then. Arius, who was accused of heresy, was invited by Emperor Constantine to defend his position. He got up and began to do so. His speech angered opponents, whose numbers included Nicholas – by then middle-aged, and apparently with a short fuse when it came to heresy. He reportedly did a Will-Smith-at-the-Oscars, rose from his seat, rushed Arius, and interrupted his speech with a punch to the face. For that, Nicholas was stripped of his bishopric, and imprisoned for a time.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Biography – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Booth, Martin – A Magick Life: The Biography of Aleister Crowley (2000)

Cracked – 30 Famous People Whose True Story Left Us Flabbergasted

Crime Museum – Frank Sinatra

Daily Beast – Was Santa Actually a Badass Who Beat Up a Priest?

Empire Times Magazine, May 4^th, 2015 – Tolouse-Lautrec: The Prostitute Authority

Encyclopedia Britannica – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Fuchs, Jeanne, and Prigozy, Ruth – Frank Sinatra: The Man, the Music, the Legend (2007)

Geriwalton – Jean-Jacques Rousseau and His Sex Life

Gulik, Robert Hans Van – Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society From ca. 1500 BC Till 1644 AD (2003)

Gunn, Peter – My Dearest Augusta: A Biography of Byron’s Half Sister (1968)

Haboush, Kim JaHyun (Editor, Translator) – The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth Century Korea (2013)

History Collection – These Historic Figures Uttered These Shocking Words With Their Last Breaths

Live Science – Santa Claus: The Real Man Behind the Myth

Mayer, Jane – Dark Money: The History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016)

National Geographic Magazine, September 16^th, 2018 – Pick Your Poison: 12 Toxic Tales

National Post, April 18^th, 2017 – ‘I Want to Harm You, Be Brutal With You’: How Mussolini’s Last Love, Fueled by Sex and Power, Shaped Him 

National Public Radio – Dining Like Darwin: When Scientists Swallow Their Subjects

New York Times, January 12^th, 2016 – Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery, Book Says

Schulman, Daniel – Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty (2014)

Smithsonian Magazine, December 2005 – The Evolution of Charles Darwin

Spanking Art – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Spiegel, November 26^th, 2009 – In Bed With Benito: Sex Diaries Reveal Mussolini’s Soft Side